First, can you please give us an idea of the sort of work your team has done recently?

Recently my team concluded, after more than six months of negotiations, the renewal of our agreement with one of Alpega’s major customers, a worldwide leading pharmaceutical company. The entire agreement was drafted and negotiated from scratch and was actually the conclusion of an entirely new agreement and not merely a renewal of an existing agreement. It involved and required a deep understanding of our own product and services (including technical aspects) but also understanding the business and needs of the customer to find a suitable compromise as basis for the future collaboration between the customer and Alpega. Naturally it involved working and bringing together all relevant business and back-office functions, collecting all relevant information and input as well as tracking internal approval procedures, which all worked out nicely in the end.

How do you feel the pandemic has changed the world of work for in-house counsel and the function of the general counsel? 

The main change is and was working and organizing one’s tasks remotely, since working from home has come to stay. Working together with colleagues that you have never met before in person, be it new hires in your own team or from other departments, is certainly a challenge. Getting used to and becoming open to new communications tools, such as file sharing and video conferencing, while recognising their benefits has also changed the daily work.

What would you say are the unique qualities required to be successful as an in-house lawyer in your industry?

It is imperative to have interest in the actual business the company is in you are working for, in my case for software as a service or IT services. An in-house lawyer should gain some technical and IT knowledge as well as commercial knowledge and should also raise questions as much as possible to stakeholders in other relevant departments. Only by having at least a basic knowledge of the business enables the in-house lawyer to make a proper risk assessment to avoid unlimited or unmitigated exposure for the company.